How to be behave in a Japanese arcade without looking like a tourist

Visiting Japan without stopping at a game center is like flying to Rome and forgetting to eat pasta. Unlike America, where arcades peaked with that scene in Terminator 2 in which a grown man stiff-arms the kid from Salute Your Shorts, the game center remains a popular hangout spot in Japan’s major cities. However, much has changed about arcades in those intervening decades, leaving some visitors confused by unfamiliar titles and a galaxy of crane games. That’s assuming they can even find an arcade to begin with.

Luckily, Sega just launched a website that serves as a guide for the gaikokujin. The Japanese Game Centers Guide includes an explanation of six different types of machines, recommendations for guest etiquette, tips for winning prizes, and a Google Map with dozens of game center locations.

I’m particularly sweet on the site’s blunt instructions for playing a crane game:

• Step 1: Insert money
• Step 2: Move the crane sideways
• Step 3: Move the crane back
• Step 4:  Drop the claw

Yes, that’s a bit obvious. But Sega’s site includes a bunch of other tips I wish I’d known before my first visit to a Japanese game center. Like, if you want to take pictures or record videos, ask the arcade staff for permission first. Or, if you’re struggling to win a crane game, let the staff know, and they might adjust the position of the prize to make things a bit easier.

Three years ago, Sega sold what remained of its brick-and-mortar arcade business to Genga. The company’s iconic blocky logo would no longer watch over the millions of annual visitors in iconic gaming spots like the streets of Akihabara and Den-Den-Town. However, the company still produces a bulk of the machines that serve as the lifeblood of arcade centers. Perhaps that’s why they made a beautiful reference guide with clutch warnings like, “Some arcades do not allow men to use purikura booths alone.”

You can surf the entire game center guide at this link. Now if Sega could put together a detailed explainer on how to Arm Champs 2 I would have all the tools I need to make my next trip to Tokyo a success.